Tag Archives: macro

Amaryllis on Mother’s Day

The control wheel has gotten flaky on my “old” trusty Canon G11. I’m pretty sure this video shows the simplest, and definitely the cheapest, fix. But anyway… Yesterday, while I was trying to find a solution for the wheel problem, I had the camera out so I took it outside and grabbed a few shots of our red amaryllis. I metered for a “high key” look for these first two shots.

Red amaryllis 1

Red amaryllis 2

And because the G11 does great macro, I had to get in close.

Red amaryllis macro

Canon G11 on the patio.

Red tulip

A very cool feature of the Canon G11 is its “Macro” function. I’m not exactly sure how close the lens can be to the subject and still focus, but one to two inches away focuses pretty much every time. However, getting a “keeper” close-up, especially handheld, is a bit of a crap shoot. My method: take six to ten shots and hope for a good one. I think this very tight shot of the sexy bits of a red tulip that just bloomed next to our driveway is a good one. The image is virtually straight from the camera–no color or saturation tweaks, no black point or contrast boosts, no overlaying of layers, no clone tooling of fly specks. I did crop it slightly on the bottom and left side, but that was the extent of the post processing.

Red tulip close-up

Camera settings: Manual mode, Macro function, 6.1mm, 1/125 second at f/4.0, ISO 100.

Canon G11 getting real close.

Micro macro

Since it’s my day off, and a long weekend (no commute–hooray!), I’m weaving in some older photos. Several weeks ago a tiny mushroom sprouted in one of the potted plants we have in our house. I figured I’d see how macro the macro function of the G11 with a fixed lens could go.

Here’s the mushroom:

Mushroom home

And here’s the perspective shot:

Mushroom home

Canon G11 in the microcosmos.